


and no shadows in between

by Dark_K



Category: Black Sails
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, M/M, ignores Treasure Island, implied polyamory, silverflint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-26 18:29:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10792290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dark_K/pseuds/Dark_K
Summary: Love isn't an enclosed room -- it is a garden.





	1. Thomas

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY.
> 
> So, if you ended up here because you have me on alert, and you're now mad because I haven't updated anything lately, let me tell you: I have reasons.
> 
> The first one is that I broke my arm in mid-february and hadn't been able to write up till three weeks ago. The other is that I'm back at college to get another Major (in Architecture) and let me tell you, IT'S SO MUCH WORK I ACTUALLY WANNA CRY.
> 
> But SilverFlint captured my heart, and I wrote this one really fast, and I'm slowly making my way back into writing. So thanks for bearing with me <3 I hope you enjoy this <3

**and** **no shadows in between**

**Thomas**

It’s as terrifying as a storm on a dark night.

For nights on end, exhausted from work on this farm he’s come to dread and love as his new home, he would dream of this moment: of James, red hair shining at candlelight, strides secure and quiet as they had been in London so, so long ago, coming for him. Even for a single moment, a single visit, a single anything, even if he were to vanish as soon as he came in — Thomas wouldn’t mind.

He missed him so much.

And now — now here he is, flesh and bone and exhaustion — but here, so very real, and very tangible, the heat of his body mingling with his own in this fierce embrace that Thomas cannot seem to just let go of even if James had shown any signs of wishing to get away, but he hasn’t.

James holds onto him with the desperation of a man stranded at sea who has finally found a port. And in a way, Thomas feels, in a way they have: this is their final destination, their final stop, their safe haven. This is them, free of all the burdens that weighted on them so much before, free of obligations to county, king and history: just them, only the two of them, and no shadows in between.

They have finally known peace.

**X**

Life in the farm isn’t a circle: it’s a flat line, and Thomas has grown accustomed to it. They awake, they eat, they work — the heaviness of it, the physical demands of the job, doesn’t allow for much wondering, for much thought. He used to think that when one kept his hands busy, they’d have time to let their minds wander, but the truth of the matter is that when the heavy work starts taking its toll, it is much easier to simply allow the thoughts to wash over you. You focus on lifting your tools once more, on taking another step, on getting your portion of water, and finally seeing the sun start to set so you can rest before it all begins again the next day.

It is a truly wonderful thing that, as a human, he still thinks that this is a better alternative for his life than dying — to live to see another sunrise, another sunset, to take another breath — even if it seems meaningless compared to the life he once had: it’s still so much more than rotting away six feet under the earth he cultivates daily.

He had always thought, before the morning when James came to him, that James would have an easier time adapting to this kind of life than he had — James wasn’t a man of luxury or wonderment: he was practical, steadfast and true. He hasn’t come from luxury like most of the men in the place have: he ascended through the ranks of the Royal Navy with hard work and earnestness. To see him survey their lands, watch over his shoulder as their guards walk through them, observe the managers as they pass by, this is the first time he sees that maybe James, his James, true to him and him alone, defender of a cause he didn’t believe could succeed because Thomas asked him to, is there, somewhere, but vanishing fast.

It’s as if he was his James in that first embrace, and then slowly melted into someone else with every step they take into the sun.

He still loves James, of course. He thinks he could learn to love any new facet James shows him, be it good, or great, or bad, or terrible, but he can’t, not yet, not because he doesn’t want to, but because James won’t show it to him.

The guards, the men in the farm all around, servants and managers alike, keep their distance from them — not _them,_  Thomas corrects himself,but from  _James_ _._ There’s an air of weariness and respect in their expressions, a spark of _otherness_ in their eyes when they stare into James’ unflinching green eyes. Thomas has to take a step back and look, really _look_ at his love through eyes that know no past between them to recognize what the people around them seem to notice so easily, but keeps escaping him — and it’s in a rainy morning, when James shows up with two bags full of supplies and a feral grin on his face that Thomas finally understands it: what they feel is fear.

**X**

It had never occurred to Thomas to try and escape when he was taken to the farm — now that he stops to think about it, it may never have occurred to any of the prisoners that leaving, escaping, was a choice, a possibility.

They have places in a ship taking them to the wild islands he had once dreamed of taming, and James clearly has a plan in place, but Thomas is taken by the storm that is this man in action — he doesn’t threaten or kill, they don’t leave through the fences in the dead of night: they leave through the front gates, as if all of them could have just walked out the moment they wanted to.

It’s a wonder and such a strange feat, and again Thomas sees how much James has changed.

“How did you manage to get them to allow us to leave?” he asks, ship taking them them away from the coast into deeper waters, and James, eyes the same color as the sea bellow them and just as dangerous, answers simply.

“I convinced them.”

He accepts the answer because he must, and there’s nothing else he could possibly do — this man beside him, looking to the horizon as if it holds all the answers, gave his own life away for Thomas’s cause: he won’t do anything short of that now that he has him back.

With every day that goes by, every second they spend at sea, every moment that James hides his face under a hat whenever someone goes by, Thomas starts noticing that they aren’t just escaping the farm and the stillness of its life — James isn’t running _away_ , he’s running _towards_ something, something that drives him, something that puts a hardness in his eyes, a determination to his features the likes of which Thomas has never seen before, not even back in London, not even for their cause, all those years ago.

He would ask what is it that James is hoping to go back to, but he finds that he is too afraid of the answer, so instead he asks of his past.

There is such a strange gap between them that Thomas finds harder and harder to fill, because he has no idea how — he is smart and well-read and perceptive, but he cannot work with a blank book such as James has become, at least in front of him.

His question comes in the middle of the night, on the bunk they share, candlelight fading fast, the lull of the ship luring them into sleep.

“What’s happened to you all these years, James?”

He doesn’t ask as an accusation as his words may suggest, but with curiosity, with love, and fearlessly — he’ll fear great many things in this world, but he will not fear James. Not his James, and whatever James he may become.

His love’s eyes seem to dance with the thin light of the flame. Green and red and orange they go, staring not at him but at whatever he must have faced, whatever must have hardened him this much, turned him in this locked vault instead of the open book he used to be.

“The world’s happened to me,” he replies, his voice in that strange cadence that isn’t quite the deference he used to speak in their early days, nor the soft one he would use later on, when they were _Thomas and James,_ however short those times had been. It’s not even the exasperated tone he used to take when he tried to make Thomas see they had no chance at achieving whatever Thomas had devised, or the anger when someone contradicted him when he knew he was right — those tones, those voices, those nuances belonged to a man used to obeying and doing his duty, someone used to taken orders, who would bow his head to his superiors because he knew that was the way of the world.

This voice, these tones, this cadence — this is the sound of freedom hard-earned and hard-kept, fought for with every breath, never to be let go. This is the voice of a commander, of a leader: of a man who would manage to _convince_ guards to let him out of a glorified prison, a man who is crossing seas and only God knows what else they still have ahead to get to where he thinks he has to be.

It’s in the sea, the day they are to get to land again, that Thomas realizes this is not the man he fell in love with, even though he thinks he himself is still the very same — this is the fruit of all these years he missed, and he hopes to God he’ll have the privilege of finding out what man James is now, because there is no version of him that Thomas can’t see himself loving.

**X**

They find themselves crossing the jungle with a band of men Thomas can only classify as pirates, even if none of them dares utter the word. James keeps to himself, talks sparsely and listens plenty — Thomas finds it hard to keep their pace even if he’s worked himself to exhaustion every single day these past ten years, because treading the forests is not the same as working the land.

They are heading to Maroon Island, he finds out through hushed whispers — they do not say it out loud, or even mention it to each other, because it’s a place of legend now, almost a year after James had gone back to him, or this new man James became had.

The men like to gather around a fire at night and tell stories of hard-won battles and long forgotten tales, but most of them have a reverent tone when they mention certain names. Long ago, it had been Thomas’s goal to free these islands of piracy, and yet, here he is, imprisoned in a world he tried to save, free in the one he used to think ought to be destroyed.

James is quiet as they share stories, smiles small and bitter in certain parts of it, his eyes never meeting Thomas’s own as they spin their tales, on and on.

It’s on the third night that he speaks for the first time, a look of raw, justified anger about his eyes that quiets all the men around them.

“I heard they hanged Charles Vane for being a beast, and that it took him two days to die. That not even the pirates wanted to save him, and that’s why they managed to kill him — he was more beast than man, by the end of it,” one of the younger men says, and James has only to turn and pin the youth with a single look, not even bothering to speak, to shoot him down in his story telling.

“Charles Vane,” James begins, voice pitched low and dangerous, green eyes sparkling with the flames, “was one of the most memorable, honorable man I’ve ever met. He never went back on his word, never tried to deceive anyone who hadn’t deceived him first,” he goes on, eyes surveying the men around them, watching as they cling to his every word, “He died for Nassau. He died for the cause, to give his men, and all the men on that square that day, something to fight for, a symbol of what Rogers was doing to all of them. He understood that rescuing him would have kept him alive, but would diminish the power of the revolution that was about to start, and he chose to give his life to it,” he pauses then, his eyes meeting Thomas’s for the first time in his tale, “Had any of the pirates that day on that square known that their revolution would die at its King’s hand anyway, they would have tried to save him, even if it meant dying by his side.”

There’s silence all around them when he’s done — not with fear or apprehension, but of respect. They are all pirates in there, they are all in the same boat, so to speak, of not being able to live their chosen paths as freely as they’d like, but they’re kindred spirits, cut from the same cloth, suffering the same pain, and it’s right then that Thomas realizes what it is that James hasn’t been telling him, the question in his green eyes as he stares into his love’s blue ones: James is as much of a pirate as any of the men sitting around the fire with them.

“Were you in Nassau that day?”, one of the older men asks, eyes firm on James who doesn’t look away from Thomas, not even for a second, “When Vane was hung?”

“No,” he says, slowly, deliberately, eyes unflinching, “I had just escaped it. Didn’t seem smart to go back so soon.”

The men are quiet again, before talking about a different man, a different assault, a different legend they choose to bring to life, but James’s eyes are still on Thomas, waiting for his response.

All he does he incline his head, ever so slowly, because for the first time since their first embrace on that farm, he’s beginning to see what James is now.

A pirate.

James nods back, and seems to settle, even if only a little bit — from that night on, he hears names he had only ever heard of in whispers in the farm: Edward Teach, and Jack Rackham, Anne Bonny, Charles Vane and Eleanor Guthrie — tales mixed with truth, mixed with the will to see them all as something bigger than life itself.

And then there were the two names whispered in reverent tones, almost as if speaking them aloud would conjure the two most fearsome pirates into their midst by magic, _Captain Flint and Long John Silver._

Thomas pays attention to those stories because he cannot help but wish to understand what kind of man would inspire such fear and love in the hearts of those who don’t even know them — the way they gave up on their revolution, the way they vanished without a trace, only the vaguest of hints of the King of the Pirates hidden away on an island with his Queen, and his partner disappearing into the night without notice — but much more than that, Thomas wants to know who are these man to _James_. How close was he to them, how important, how much did he know of them, how deep into their revolution had James been, how powerful were the people he got himself tangled with that he had been sent away to the farm instead of hanged, like all the other pirates?

He doesn’t ask, though — but he does learn more of those two than any other pirate still around. How unstoppable they had become when fighting together, how no force could stop them when they set both their minds to it, how they killed their revolution, but still won from the traitor Billy Bones. Thomas can’t help but be in awe of these people, these tales, this courage. To give everything up, to leave everything behind, to believe in a cause so much that it becomes their lives: he can’t even start picturing it.

Thomas can, however, see why James has been with them, why he believed in it, how he would become a follower, a disciple of Flint and Silver: James has always been a good supporter, steadfast, true and loyal to a fault. Any man in a revolution would count themselves lucky to have him by their side.

The closer they get to the settlement, the more restless James becomes — eager to see his King, perhaps, in awe of finding him again, maybe. James still won’t tell him how involved he had been, and Thomas doesn’t ask, because as much as he trusts this man, as much as he is as good as putting his own life in his hands, he doesn’t know him very well, and James had never been very good with words. Thomas waits to see it all in their arrival, and as long as that moment doesn’t come, he reads James in their march, slowly but surely taking the lead of their trek, steps more certain than any of the others’, as if he’s done this a thousand times before — no need for maps or clues, as the other men have.

He knows this path as if he owns it, as if this settlement is a part of him — maybe as much a part of him as the bedlam and the farm are now a part of Thomas.

And then, one day, with the sun at the highest point, they see, between the trees and the insects and the scorching heat, they see it: tall, spiked walls, watchers all around, guarded as a fort — and it may as well be one, for all that Thomas has heard of this King who resides inside.

The men behind them, for James has once again taken the lead with Thomas by his side, hesitate and fall back, now wary of whatever may be on the other side of that fence no matter how much they talked about getting there.

James touches his arm briefly, a small warning in his eyes, which Thomas takes to mean that he should wait behind — he isn’t fluent in this James yet — but he does stay, and James goes forth, steps sure, head held high, no hat covering him now, as if he’s leaving all the shadows they have been hiding in, ever since leaving the farm, ever since London, truly, behind him: here, in the middle of the jungle, facing a dozen armed pirates and run-away slaves, he stands tall, and brave, and true.

When Thomas manages to look away, he sees on the guards’ faces the same awe he feels, and more than that: there is joy and fear, wonderment and trepidation. One of the guards points his weapon at them, and James has only to tilt his head to the side for the man to fumble with it and bring it down again.

He doesn’t say a word — it’s very clear James doesn’t need to. Two men scramble off their watch posts and run inside, another climbs down eagerly, yelling for the gates to be opened.

They are welcomed into the settlement in the Maroon Island with not a word needed to be spoken, by James appearance alone, and it strikes Thomas as so right, and at the same time so odd, that it is so.

From the top of the houses, built crudely but securely, from the dusty streets, out of windows, and through holes, from the top of the trees around them, and even from the far off watch posts from the other side of the settlement they are watched — their every move observed carefully — and head held high James goes ahead, Thomas just a step behind, feeling, for the first time in his life, that James is leading and he has nothing to do but follow, because where James is standing now, Thomas cannot reach.

As they cross the main street to what is clearly the center square, people make way for them to pass, and then a rushed whisper runs through them like a strong wind, and Thomas can finally look away from James, because the legend he has been hearing about so much the past couple of weeks is walking towards them — a shock of raven black hair falling in curls around his shoulders, a part of it tied back to keep it from his eyes, blue as the deep sea, not light like Thomas’s own, but dark and treacherous, not quite sparkling, but deceiving you into thinking there’s kindness hidden in where there’s only a will of steel. He wears a long coat, and one of his legs is made of wood, but he looks no less fierce for it — it’s not a weakness, for this man has no weaknesses: this is the Pirate King, Long John Silver.

He stops ten feet from them, and a small circle seems to form around him and James — even the men who came with them are now mingled with the ones who already lived in the settlement: pirates taking in their own with no questions asked but the one in their King’s eyes, and they sparkle with fury.

When he looks at James, he sees the same fury staring back — hatred and betrayal, pain and something more, so deep, so all encompassing that Thomas can’t even put a name to it.

“You couldn’t just stay put,” the King says, voice dripping with malice and anger, a sneer on his beautiful features.

 “You knew this day would come,” James answers, voice just as angry, eyes just as hard, and they stare and stare at each other, taking the other in, as if measuring their enemy before a fight.

The silence is tight like a rope before breaking, air heavy with expectation of what’s to come, and then, in a second, they move, a gasp is heard from many mouths at once, and just as Thomas thinks they’ll be at each others’ throats, their arms close around one another, hugging tight, pulling until there’s no room in between. Eyes closed, they stay, and Thomas swears he sees tears running down the King’s face.

Silence breaks after that, a relieved sigh running through the people who clearly know them for longer than the new comers — certainly for longer than Thomas — and when they break apart, people are already back at their duties, having seen the King accept this man back.

“I see you managed not to run the settlement into the ground while I was gone,” James is saying when Thomas hesitantly approaches them, and Long John Silver snorts a small laugh.

“I’m not the one setting fires — usually I was the one putting them out,” he says, voice light and happy and free.

Thomas stares at James then: the worry lines are gone from his face, the sadness, the tightness around his mouth — it’s all gone in the smile he has on his lips now, staring at this King as if looking at the sun.

“That’s not quite how I remember it,” he replies, and slowly Thomas starts to put this picture together — and it’s when the King finally turns to him, clearly only realizing he’s there when setting his eyes upon him, it’s when Long John Silver moves half a step closer to James, as if shielding him from a newcomer, that Thomas finally realizes how well James knows these people: he didn’t just fight _for_ Captain Flint and Long John Silver.

They _are_ Captain Flint and Long John Silver.

 


	2. Madi

**Madi**

Madi knows exactly who the man she loves is, and she also knows there’s the love they share, there’s what they’d do for each other — and then there is what he would do, what he has done, for Captain Flint.

Her and John’s love is simple, and easy, and uncomplicated — it’s what she had dreamed of as a child, when she used to sneak in and listen to the tales being told to Eleanor when they were still playmates, of princesses knowing that the prince was the love of their lives just by looking at them.

It hadn’t quite happened like that for her and John, but it was as close as it could come for real people: she herself was a princess when they met, her mother a queen, and he a newly made king, built on words and exaggerated truths, but no less kingly for it.

It’s so easy to understand and feel it, and she is glad for it, because she loves John with all her heart, but she has a mind strong enough to know that he also loves Flint in an entirely different manner.

Theirs is a love built on everything and nothing. It is bigger than themselves, bigger than anything, even their cause. John thought he had left their revolution because it was the best for everyone, but truth is that he was so afraid that Flint would have no reason to live for when their war ended, no matter the results, that he didn’t even want to start it — should they lose, Flint would most likely end up dead. Should they win, what would that man have to live for? It is the curse written in his name, he is built to ignite, set fires and run the world ablaze with words and determination— she knows it, because she herself is very much similar to him, if a bit less damaged, a bit more controlled.

Madi is a fire keeping you warm at night when you need it the most — Flint is a forest fire in the hottest of summer, with no rain in sight, running everywhere, and consuming everything. He is a cause in and of itself, and he ignites passion and fervor in those around him: she knows it well, for she has been touched by his flames too, but John — oh, John hadn’t just been scorched, John is a part of the conflagration.

If she were a little more weak-minded, if she didn’t believe in herself as much as she does, she would be afraid, so very afraid, when she sees Captain Flint returning to their settlement, red hair and green eyes ablaze, ready to ignite their world once more. Instead, she smiles as she watches John going through his whole range of emotions, and donning his best King facade to go to his other half, for that is what they are: halves, never really complete, never really up to their full potential unless they’re with each other. _She_ ’s a force unto herself — _they_ are a natural disaster waiting to happen apart, and a controlled explosion together.

She watches from a distance as they stare and posture, and then desist all pretense, embracing, as she knows they have longed to do for the year they were apart.

Madi doesn’t mind that John loves Flint so — she couldn’t. Their love was there long before she came into their lives, and if there is one thing she learned from Jack Rackham is that love isn’t limited, love isn’t an enclosed room — love is a garden with enough life to go around for everyone in it if you know how to cultivate it properly. So she watches, smile still on her lips as they talk, and she worries only for one thing: the man beside Captain Silver, pale as one can be, so far from everyone else in that island, eyes blue as clear skies, and in awe of Flint as are all those who see him for the first time.

That is Thomas, the one for whom Flint had let himself be convinced to let go of his war, the reason Flint had fought all those years, the cause he had built in his head. That is Thomas, the man Flint is supposed to love most in this world, staring at his James and his King, and realizing, maybe for the first time, that the man he loved is dead and gone, buried in a sea of blood, anger and revolution. Madi sighs, knowing she chose this when she decided to give her heart to a man like John Silver, built on lies and scheming, smart as one can possibly be, and also so oblivious to his own charm when he lets someone in.

She has learned, with time and observation, to allow him his time, his space, to let him be and he lets her be. She had, after all, come into this tangled web after any of them had, even Billy, but Thomas — Thomas may still firmly believe that the man smiling at him kindly now still has any traces of the one who threw his life on the line for him, and him alone.

The discovery of what and who Flint really is may be painful to him, but maybe, if he is strong enough, there’s hope for joy in his future yet.

She’ll just have to wait and see.

**X**

Perhaps it is a bit pretentious of her, but she didn’t expect Thomas to be useful to anything in the settlement. She really didn’t register the part where he had worked for a decade in a farm, in his own prison, and instead had focused on the fact that he had been a Lord, high society, the kind of person who would see her as an escaped slave’s daughter and not a Queen.

She was wrong, of course. Thomas is very kind, smart and helpful. He fits in with the farmers of their settlement, understanding hard work and helping as much as he can — when the man isn’t around the plantations, he’s hanging onto Flint’s every word, every gesture, every glance.

Madi has to give it to Flint: he is trying. It’s not entirely successful, it’s not entirely true, but he tries. He shows Thomas around, and finds a room for them, just the two of them. No one dares judge Captain Flint in their settlement, and any who would are stopped with barely a glance from John, who seems devoted to trying as much as Flint is.

What a pair they make.

A liar and a believer, dancing around truths with the dexterity they show when in battle, sidestepping everyone else while keeping the other always in their line of sight. It would be funny if Madi didn’t think that Thomas, poor Thomas, suffered Thomas, isn’t aware of the game that has been happening between the other two — perhaps because they don’t see it for a game themselves. It’s not out of bad intentions that they do this to themselves and the people around them, it’s who they are.

John and Captain Flint are so ingrained in each other’s thoughts and habits and lives that it doesn’t occur to them that they should clarify what they are, who they are, what they mean for each other to anyone else. It doesn’t occur to them that they could be any other way.

She is decided not to interfere, however, up until the point when she sees John’s guard dog eyeing Thomas and Flint, and she decides it’s best the poor man starts to get some perspective into who his love is now from _her_ rather than from Israel Hands.

“You have much knowledge of farming,” she starts, approaching slowly the point where Thomas is looking out to their humble fields — enough to feed them and trade some for the things they cannot grow in this weather. Never anything that would attract much attention, but enough.

Thomas takes her in warily — not because of the color of her skin, she realizes, nor because she’s a woman, but because she’s a queen in his eyes, and he is wary of people in positions of power.

If only he knew the man he loves is just as much a king in here to their people as she, her mother, or John.

“There wasn’t much to do in the past decade but farm,” he replies, his tone moderate and respectful, and he bows a little bit when she comes to stand at his side.

She isn’t a short woman by any means, but she does have to look up to stare at Thomas’s face, and sees him staring out and ahead, to the expanse of land surrounding them with longing on his beautiful features.

“Would you accompany me in a walk?” she asks him, not really waiting for a response, but taking slow, measured steps towards the woods off to one side of their plantation, knowing he’ll follow.

Even his steps sound soft, following closely in a path she knows well, for having walked it many times — all of their land may be violent, its very dust imbued with the blood of her people, John’s people, even Thomas’s people, but what their land doesn’t lack is beauty. The delicate petals of every flower, the soft breeze lulling the leaves on every tree — their world is like a painting, beautiful and delicate and deadly in its details.

Thomas, pale and proper, hands calloused from hard work, but no less soft for it, could fit in, if he wants to. Only if he wants to.

And Madi thinks that he has to know the whole truth before committing himself to this life.

“I’m not a woman to dance around issues that are important to me, mister Hamilton,” she keeps walking as she speaks, maintaining a good pace so he can follow her without struggle, “The fact that Captain Flint brought you into our settlement means that he trusts you, or he wouldn’t have brought you here, knowing, as he knows, as everyone who lives here knows, that we are always in danger. The governor aids us in many ways, but even he cannot stop our capture if we were to be officially found. As you can gather by now, being here for days, we are a colony of escaped slaves and fugitives from the law. We are what’s left of a revolution that settled in a manner none of us were expecting, and if word spreads that Captain Flint is back, we may well be hunted down and killed for taking him in.”

“I would never—” he starts, and then she stops walking, sitting down on a fallen tree trunk and simply staring. He quiets down, looking at her with scared eyes, and he looks so very fragile right then — she almost thinks she shouldn’t say anything after all, but rethinks that on the spot: if she _doesn’t_ , he will suffer that much more.

“I don’t think you’d endanger us, no. I didn’t begin this conversation with that opening to test you for your loyalty — it is enough that Flint brought you here for us to trust you, as much as pirates and slaves trust anyone,” she says with a small smile, and he nods at her nervously. Madi gestures at the space beside her on the trunk, and Thomas hesitantly takes a seat, as far from her as it’d be polite, and then he turns towards her, waiting, “I began it like that to make you see what Flint means to every person in that settlement, to every pirate in the sea, everyone in Nassau who’ll learn, sooner or later, that he isn’t dead and buried, but alive and here. That we wouldn’t send him away for the danger he poses, that we would never deny him a place among us, because he _is_ one of us. A pirate — some say the _best_ pirate of them all, even though Teach, and even Jack or John, run for that title as well.” She pauses, sees him staring at her impassively, waiting for her to come to her point, “The man you knew a decade ago, mister Hamilton, doesn’t exist anymore. He died, such a long time ago I didn’t even meet him — the one who may have some insight into what he was is John, and he keeps that secret with the same care he keeps everything related to Captain Flint. I can see he is careful around you, but you have to know that he isn’t the same man you left in London.”

Thomas is quiet for a long moment, before sighing deeply, and staring out into the woods, blue eyes sparkling in remembrance.

“James was never sweet or soft — he is a believer, he always has been. I believed I could save Nassau through a convoluted plan, and he told me it couldn’t be done, but he tried anyway. He was a follower, someone I trusted with my life, who would do no wrong, who would never disobey the law, would never betray anyone who trusted him,” he turns and stares at her then, careful still, but opening up little by little, “I see he is not any of that anymore. His presence is heavy — it fills rooms and inspires people, and I can see everyone standing up a little bit straighter when he walks by them, as if afraid to disappoint him. He is a leader now, I can see that. I can see that he’s changed, I can see that he still tries to hide from me what he’s done in the past decade because he thinks I might disapprove but I’m not sure I disapprove of anything anymore — not after what I’ve been through.”

For the first time, Madi sees more than just calm and ease in this man — she sees a little bit of anger, and a little bit of resentment, and for some strange reason, it puts her mind at ease.

What a strange world she lives in that she doesn’t trust peace.

“Civilization has failed me, queen Madi, it has failed me terribly, and he went to the other end of the spectrum and came out a winner. I don’t judge him for it, and I’m glad he did it.”

She knows then that she could stop here, and let him understand the rest of it by himself, but she doesn’t — as much as Thomas seems to be stronger than she thought before, he is still so fragile in her eyes, so unaccustomed to this violent, volatile world they all live in now.

“Have you met Israel Hands yet?” she asks, voice carefully neutral, and Thomas frowns, clearly thinking.

“It’s been few days and many, many people. I don’t think I remember them all.”

Madi allows herself a small scoff of amusement.

“If you had met him, you’d remember. You must have seen him around John — he watches over him, and no one is completely sure why. He gave John his loyalty, as many people have given it, because he charms them into it,” she stops for a moment, looking at him from the corner of her eyes, watching him watching her, and keeps going, leaving clues for him to pick up so she won’t have to spell it all out for him, “Hands is quite convinced Flint is the devil. That he is the one who can make John go from a sensible man, someone who can plot and dispel a revolution with words and plans alone, to an enraged monster who’ll do whatever Flint asks him to do. He doesn’t trust Flint, I dare say Flint is the one thing he fears in this world, not because he thinks he couldn’t face him in a fight, or because he fears being killed by him, but because when Flint speaks, John _listens_.”

Madi turns to Thomas, staring at him right in the eyes, gaze calm and confident, never wavering.

“The truth of the matter is that _Hands is right_. There is nothing in this world John wouldn’t do if Flint asks him to — he killed their revolution because he thought it’d be better for Flint, and for me, and for us all, but if Flint didn’t have _you_ , if John didn’t think he could offer something better to him than the revolution they started, both of them would have burned Nassau to the ground rather than give up, because John wants to give Flint the world, whatever world he wants to have.”

She stops talking, waiting for a beat and then two, and Thomas finally stares at her, understanding in his eyes.

“And James would do the same for him.”

Madi shakes her head slightly, before smiling sadly at him, because this could break the man’s heart irreparably.

“No,” she tilts her head a little, her voice going soft and careful, “ _Flint_ would do the same for him. And the lengths to which Flint is willing to go are much further than the ones James would.”

**X**

After their talk, Thomas seeks her out a few more times — not to talk or to complain, but just to be. He watches them like a hawk, he understands them in a way she herself had come to understand them, but the other two — oblivious to their own behavior as one can possibly be — go unaware of the fact that everyone around them knows their world revolves around each other, and everyone else is merely pulled in by their gravity.

“When we escaped,” Thomas starts one night, people gathered around the fire, John is retelling something that happened before he was a king, before he met her, before he trusted Flint, in his times as a pretend cook whose only purpose was that he had memorized a map. People are laughing at the charming way he describes himself and the others, captured by his words as people always are, “I thought we were running from our past. From London, and civilization, and the farm and everything that held us back,” Thomas’s gaze, that up until that moment had been on Flint, moves towards John, and there is a small sparkle of jealousy in there, but also acceptance, “Once we reached the ocean, I realized he wasn’t running _from_ something, he was running _towards_ something, and I didn’t know what it was until we got here. And even then, I thought _this_ is what we had been headed towards. The settlement, this strange kind of fragile freedom we have in here. His people.”

His eyes are once again upon John, admiring, perhaps, the way he talks, pacing his tales for the most effective capture of his audience, words sweet like honey and then loud like thunder, basking in the enraptured looks of the people around him.

“But now I can see, he was running back to him. _That_ is his world, isn’t it?”

His question isn’t one of confirmation, for he knows — Madi can now see he _knows_ — but one question deeper than his words. His question is how does she do it, _what_ does she do, how can this work.

She is quiet for a moment longer, staring at her lover and his love, watching their magic, the pull of their tide. They are bigger than the world they live in, they are bigger than the pirates listening, and to stand beside them, you had to be just as big.

She knows she is. She is a queen, and a fighter, and the fact that John is hers, but is also Flint’s, never once fazed her, because it’s who he _is_. Just like Anne is who she is, torn between Jack and Max, and just like Jack loves his tales just as much as he loves Anne back.

Love isn’t an enclosed room, it is a garden.

“The woman who rules Nassau, and don’t think for a second that the Governor has any real power in there, is a remarkable woman. She betrayed many people, including a pirate named Anne Bonnie, whom she loves dearly,” she stops, thinking of a way to explain this that doesn’t sound strange, but aren’t they all strange, especially for this man who comes from the life all of them ran from?, “Anne loves Jack Rackham with all her heart. Almost died for him a few times, would actually die for him if he asked, without hesitation — and then Max would find a way to save her, for that is what you do when you love someone. You save them, and you fight for them, and you respect the ones they love too. Max and Jack definitely don’t love each other, but they do love Anne, and Anne loves them both. It works.”

“You do not love Ja— Flint,” he states, and Madi smiles quietly, tilting her head a bit.

“I admire and respect him for the leader he is. I am very much _like_ him, which, to me, is something to be proud of. But, no, I do not love him, not like I love John. It seems to me it would be incredibly narcissistic of me to do so,” she smirks, and sees amusement in his eyes, “It doesn’t have to be one thing _or_ the other. Sometimes, things just _are_ , and the best we can do is let them be.”

Thomas is quiet for a very long time. He listens to John’s stories, he listens to the men singing around the fire, to the women singing afterwards, he just listens.

And then finally, when people have grown tired enough that everyone is going back to their homes, he stands, offers Madi a hand up, which she takes because it’s the polite thing to do, and inclines his head to her, a sadness so deep in his eyes she almost thinks this is when he breaks.

“I just wish he would have told me.”

Madi squeezes his hand once before letting it go.

“He can’t tell you something he doesn’t know himself.”

She leaves him alone with his own thoughts — she’s done her part, and they’ll make or break whatever balance they have.

It’s out of her hands now.

 


	3. Thomas

**Thomas**

Now that he knows what to watch for, it’s so clear.

They circle around each other like flames in a house on fire, like waves in a stormy sea. They are, as queen Madi pointed out, very much unaware of the fact that the other is always on their line of sight, always an advice at the other's shoulder — they are a force of nature waiting to happen, and they are getting restless.

On some level, Thomas knows what it means that James is now Captain Flint, that he is a pirate not only in name, but by choice — that he wouldn’t, possibly _couldn’t_ leave this life behind, even if Thomas asked, which he would never do. It suits him, really.

But knowing something and seeing it happen are two different things, and he finally sees it the day an incursion of privateers finds their little settlement, and decides to attack — probably thinking they’d only find women and children left behind.

They aren’t many, their attackers - a group of not even fifty strong and, well armed as they may be, they don’t know the area well, while the men inside their walls know how to fight against all odds.

Thomas doesn’t even get a chance to try and fight alongside them — he is sent to hide, as are many of them who had never had any training in battle. Their distinction isn’t by men or women, but who’d be useful in a fight, who can do it well, and those who can’t.

He stands behind, and he watches, and he _marvels_.

James is a blur of action, cutting through their enemies with an ease that would be scary if Thomas hadn’t lost all sense of loyalty to an organized government a long time ago. John Silver, however, is something he had never expected — leaning on a cane with one arm, and a sword in hand in another, he fights as well as any man beside him, gives himself into battle as if it’s the one thing he was put into this world to do, and maybe it is.

Maybe fighting alongside Captain Flint is his one true mission, and Flint’s destiny is to fight beside his king —  and if that is true, then they do it with a mastery that Thomas had never witnessed in a fight before. They don’t just fight well, they fight as one, twisting and turning and slashing and sparring in tandem, as if they know the other’s very thoughts without even having to look.

They fight the privateers, they win — their bodies are buried or burned, and left with no traces behind, and Thomas is left to wonder what he got himself too, and how damaged he has become that he doesn’t mind any of it.

He goes to look for James a few hours later, after helping to bury the last of the bodies, and finds him in their room, having a heated discussion with John.

“— complete madness!”

“It is not madness, and you know it! It’s an _opportunity_!”

“An opportunity to get us all hanged in a public square! Not even Max can save us if they find _us_ , Flint! Damn Billy did his job way too well, and now they all think I actually hold some kind of power over anything!” John pauses, and Thomas, even not knowing him very well, can almost see the smirk on his face from where he is hidden behind the door, listening in without a trace of embarrassment, because he has a right to know, “And _you_! You, they think you’re dead. You show up again in a ship, and we’ll have men running for their lives without us having to actually do anything. It’d spread like wildfire, we’d be _pirates_ again.”

There’s silence for a moment, and Thomas dares to look through a small opening to see them in the room — James has his back to the door, posture rigid and controlled, his dark shirt tight against his shoulders. John, on the other hand, looks disheveled and wild, curls escaping the knot at the back of his head, eyes sparkling in wonderment.

“It’s what you want, isn’t it?” he asks, curiosity tinging his tone as if surprised to have come by this realization, but knowing it is the truth, even though he sounds as if he can’t believe it, “You _want_ to be Captain Flint again, and not just _James_. You don’t want peace, you don’t want a quiet life with Thomas - you _want_ this.”

James is quiet at that, and Thomas shakes his head slightly, realizing now what Madi had told him before — for two extremely intelligent and cunning men, that pair is as oblivious as one can get when the matter is each other.

“I never said I wanted any of that — you did,” Flint’s voice is calm, and quiet, and hurt, and Thomas can see John’s face crumble for a second, and then settle on confusion.

“I thought you wanted him more than anything. I thought you’d give everything up to have him back.”

His broken tone speaks of a thousand wounds suffered from that thought, and then James moves, taking a step forward, apparently not even noticing what he is doing, staring into John’s eyes.

“Even you?”

Thomas can see John swallowing dryly at that, throat moving almost painfully, eyes sparkling like a stormy sea.

“Who am I next to anyone?” the man whispers brokenly, and Flint sets a hand on his shoulder making John close his eyes at the comfort, as if that touch alone can relieve him of all the pain weighing him down. 

“You are Long John Silver, King of the Pirates. You don’t need a past to be who you are, for you are more than enough right now,” he stops speaking, waits until John has opened his eyes again and is staring right back at him before going on, “I would never voluntarily leave you, just as I know you only did what you did because you thought you were right — I forgive you. I did want Thomas back. Giving that to me is more than I could ever ask of anyone, but I’d never ask him back at the cost of _you_. We’re in this together from the moment you volunteered into that boat with me. It’s too late to go back now.”

It takes another minute for any of them to move or even speak, and Thomas waits with baited breath to see what they’ll do.

What they do is that Long John Silver smirks, puts a hand on Captain Flint’s shoulder, shakes him a little bit and laughs before speaking.

“So we steal the privateers’ ship.”

The smile Thomas sees on Flint’s face is the realest one he has _ever_ seen.

“We steal the privateers’ ship.”

And that is how they go back to being pirates.

**X**

It takes them weeks to set sail, and then months to come back — Thomas would have had more than chance enough to leave if he wanted to, but he doesn’t, because this right here is more life than he had ever lived before.

They work for what they have, and every day is a new discovery — he enjoys Madi’s company, and he talks to the men and women around them, and even considers going on a trip or two in the future.

When James returns, the first hug is for him, along with a bag full of books that he undoubtedly stole from some unsuspecting captain in some ship.

They still have long walks, and now James talks to him of his life and his past without being afraid that he’ll leave him behind, or hate him for what he’s become. It takes him that first foray back into piracy to realize that Thomas isn’t going anywhere, that he accepts James for who he is now, and isn’t planning on running scared any time soon.

Between Flint and John, things are slow, and Thomas and Madi trade many exasperated looks at their dance, but neither of them gets in the middle of it — they’ll sort themselves out sooner or later, the important thing is that now they aren’t hiding anymore.

They stand in the sun of this new world, and they may be thieves and pirates and slaves, but they are _people,_ they are _living_ , and right then, they are standing in the sun, with their pasts at their back and their futures ahead, and no shadows in between. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [Come say hello and send me death threats about the things I haven't updated, they always motivate me <3.](http://darkjan.tumblr.com/)


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